Posted by bleauberry on December 28, 2011, at 15:41:19
In reply to Antidepressants, Talk Theraphy, Placebos All Same, posted by Phillipa on December 27, 2011, at 20:33:12
Here is how I view this type of scenario.
First of all I do not accept the premise that meaningful results are obtained by viewing "depression" as something that is the same from person to person. The symptoms are the same, for sure, but not the underlying cause or malfunction.
Therefore there are different kinds of depression....such as pathogenic or biological, life circumstances, genetical, environmental insults either physical or mental, and unexplained. Each of these is going to respond to a different method specific to the cause. Since the body and brain or so complicated beyond our wisdom we might never know for sure what the cause is in any particular person, which means it is a random roll of the dice with various treatments to see what sticks and what doesn't.
That's what happens in all these studies. And that's why the percentages of responders in each treatment group wasn't much different. The percentage of people that needed an antidepressant was about the same as the percentage of people who needed counseling and about the same as people who found a biological problem and about the same as any other group. The placebo people.....who knows, they had the unexplained depression and for whatever reason it was temporary....the whole ordeal of the clinical setting and such was enough to snap out of it. Or they had a life issue that they came to terms with sometime during the trial and their outlook improved.
That's the way I explain these apparently confusing deceiving numbers coming out of trials. They are flawed before they even begin by using a flawed view of what depression is.
While depression is a disease in its own right, it is also a symptom, and that's where I think they get it wrong. They see it as only a disease.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1005682
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20111226/msgs/1005723.html